Data Snapshot
UW Medicine Hospitals:
King County: The county reported 173 new positive cases and 0 new death on July 22.
Washington: The state reported 49,247 cases and 1,468 deaths as of July 21. A total of 855,152 people have been tested and 5.8% of those tests have been positive.
United States: The CDC reports 3,952,273 cases and 142,755 deaths as of July 23.
Global: WHO reports 15,012,731 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 619,150 deaths as of July 23.
*Numbers update frequently, please follow links for most up-to-date numbers.
Research News
JAMA Network: Comparison of Unsupervised Home Self-collected Midnasal Swabs With Clinician-Collected Nasopharyngeal Swabs for Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Infection
Featuring: Denise McCulloch, Ashley Kim, Naomi Wilcox, Jennifer Logue, Helen Chu, Allergy & Infectious Diseases, Janet Englund, Pediatrics, Alex Greninger, Laboratory Medicine
“Increased diagnostics are urgently needed to contain the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Home self-collected swabs may increase testing access while minimizing exposure risk to health care workers and depletion of personal protective equipment, allowing for early community detection of COVID-19. A comparison of unsupervised home self-collected swabs with clinician-collected nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis has not been well described.”
UW Medicine in the News
The New York Times: To Get People to Wear Masks, Look to Seatbelts, Helmets and Condoms
Featuring: Frederick Rivara, Pediatrics
“The ways we built habits around other routine safety measures can inform mask-wearing, experts say.”
UPI: At-home COVID-19 test kits accurate, might bolster screening effort, study says
Featuring: Helen Chu, Infectious Disease
“At-home nasal swab-based tests for COVID-19 correctly diagnose 80% of people with the virus and 98% of those who don’t have it, a study published Wednesday by JAMA Network Open found.”
Newsweek: U.S. coronavirus deaths could be cut 67 percent with ‘universal mask usage’
Featuring: IHME
“While many people have been opposed to mask mandates, the widespread use of masks could potentially help significantly reduce the country’s daily case count and daily death toll, according to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.”
KUOW: Lines for this Covid-19 testing van stretch for hours in King County, and now it’s running out of money
Featuring: Lisa Chew, General Internal Medicine
“The van serves up to around 200 people a day, according to UW Medicine, and rotates among south King County locations identified for their high rates of confirmed cases of Covid-19 and scarcity of testing sites.”
Tweet of the Week
